Nothing Wrong with Pink

Like many little girls, pink was my favorite color as a young child. When I got a little older, I decided I hated pink because it was too girly. That contempt for all things pink lasted until just recently, when I asked myself why, exactly, is girly such a bad thing? I still don't think pink will become a major part of my wardrobe anytime soon; but it is a pretty color, after all, and I have decided not to be completely opposed to it. Nothing like taking a firm stand on an important issue.

I bought this pretty jewelry finding a few years ago, on the theory that someday I would do something with it. I knew that would involve attaching tatted flowers to it one way or another, but I didn't quite have the vision. In fact, even when I finally started the project a couple of days ago, I didn't really know how it would end up looking; I just started tatting.

Here's how it looked with the first flower attached.

That seemed like a good start, so I kept going and eventually ended up with this:

The flowers are all made the same: 5 rings of 2-4b4-2, joined at the side picots; on the bottom flower I used three beads per petal, although they're in a color that's harder to see against this particular background. After tying the ends together on the front side, I passed one end behind the flower and then back up to the front across from the other end. I then passed both ends through a larger bead from opposite directions, and finally pulled them both through to the back to tie them once more. For the light pink flower and the dark pink one on the left, I also tied them to the finding.

After completing all four flowers, I wound two shuttles to make the leaves and vines more or less at random, although I had decided on the overall shape by this time. The vines are joined to each flower in at least two places, so the flowers won't wiggle around.

Thread stats: Lizbeth size 20; the flowers are 617 Magenta Medium, 618 Magenta Dark (these two colors look very different on the Lizbeth color chart, at least on my monitor, but in real life they are definitely pink as in the above photo), and 641 Lilac Dark. The greens are 667 Orchid Green Medium and 668 Orchid Green Dark; you have to look pretty closely to see that these are different colors, but it's just enough to give it some depth.

The pendant is now on a pretty chain, but no photos of that; the more shiny stuff I add, the harder it gets to take a picture. Next up, coordinating earrings. But don't worry, Diane, I still like blue better!